After we were blocked by the Roskomnadzor in early September we started working on changing the site to make it possible for us to easily create mirrors to make it easier to access. LocalBitcoins.net is the first mirror site that has been enabled.

We have been running the mirror for a few weeks with no problems and it is now ready to use.

If you have problems visiting our normal website at LocalBitcoins.com, you can instead visit LocalBitcoins.net. At the moment this is the only mirror we have enabled. However we will now be able to create new mirrors faster in the future.

If you have any questions, comments or problems with the mirror please open up a support ticket from our website.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Earlier this week I stumbled upon a blog post, where Finnish self-credited "blockchain expert" made a claim that during the last year, term blockchain has passed bitcoin in google trends "clearly". I did not pay attention to this detail, until my co-worker pointed out the mistake. I was surprised to find out that if you use google trends yourself, you can see totally different story:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=blockchain,bitcoin

Show me the point where blockchain passes bitcoin in google trends.

I did not give too much thought about the issue at the time, since the guy was somebody I have never heard of, and I don't care too much about such details in general. I mean blockchain passes bitcoin in google trends, who cares?

Anyway, there was still this nagging voice in my head, that I have seen the something similar somewhere else as well. That happened to be true, since I had seen the following graph presented in the Helsinki blockchain conference couple of weeks ago*.

Edit 9th of September 2016: Some of the wording was edited, since as I discussed with the presenter, such claim, that blockchain has passed bitcoin is search amounts was never made. As pointed out by the presenter, the graph is trying to explain current hype moment of certain search terms, but he certainly understood that you can get the wrong impression from the slide out of context.

You see, bitcoin is going nowhere!

Perhaps you can make a sincere mistake with your slides you have created couple of hours before your pitch, but guess what? Same kind of graph can be found from CreditSuisse report as well.

Of course, you can see the difference here; they have made their own chart called "Google trend momentum", where you just search each trend individually, and add them up as one. I don't know how scientifically valid method this is, but I can totally understand if someone gets a wrong impression from these charts. If you are using Google trends as a reference, at least it would be somewhat fair to add the fact that bitcoin is still around five times more searched term than blockchain.

It is true that miracle word "blockhain" has been popping up more and more lately, and the graph shows that blockchain hype is growing, but this kind of graphs make you wonder if it is really based on any real life solutions, or is it just these "blockchain experts" who are making up the buzz.

- Nikolaus Kangas

The Credit Suisse research was pointed out by reddit user rachyandco 1 month ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4wd5a8/credit_suisse_is_comparing_the_trends_between/

Friday, September 2, 2016

Over the years the UK has been an important market for LocalBitcoins, especially back in 2012 when we were founded. The UK helped solidify the future of LocalBitcoins by being the first market to see growth in P2P trading whichgave us enough money to hire our first employee.

This year we've had to watch as our friends in the UK suffer throughhard timesafter the results of the Brexit voteon June 23rd.Since then we've seen value of the pound gradually dropin value by 16%.

Weremember the support you gave us in our early days, now it's time for us to give back and help you get out of the pound before it's too late.From this Monday, the 5th of September, we will halve the LocalBitcoins trading fee from the current 1 % to 0.5 % for all Bitcoin trades done in the UK*. The reduced fee will be active for trades started between Monday the 5th
of September at 12:00:01 AM UTC and 11:59:59 pm UTC October 2nd.LocalBitcoins is the world's leading peer to peer Bitcoin exchange where users buy and sell Bitcoins directly from each other. Founded in June 2012 LocalBitcoins is one of the oldest Bitcoin exchangesand as of August 2016 LocalBitcoins has more than 1 350 000 registered users from 249 different countries exchanging$14 000 000 worth of BTC every week.

Happy trading!

– LocalBitcoins.com* LocalBitcoins reserves the right to change the conditions of the campaign at any time.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

At the time of the
Bitfinex hack last Tuesday the default price equation in use for
LocalBitcoins advertisements was taking pricing data from Bitfinex. When
trading was stopped on Bitfinex, advertisements using the default price
equation on LocalBitcoins stopped working. We have since disabled all
advertisements that use Bitfinex in the price equation to make sure
there are no advertisements active with the wrong price.

A new default

To
replace the old default price equation, bitfinexusd, we introduced a
new pricing source called btc_in_usd. Instead of relying on pricing
information from one source, this equation takes pricing information
from 7 different sources and calculates a median price which is used.
This makes it much more resiliant for situations where the price source
gives incorrect, erroneous data or stops working entirely.

Many
of you rely on the default price equation with your advertisements, with
this new change we want to make sure it's as reliable as possible.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Earlier today we improved
on how transaction fees are calculated, fees for outgoing Bitcoin
transaction are now paid once every hour based on the average fee per
transaction instead of directly after every transaction.

Last
year we changed how fees on outgoing Bitcoin transactions were
calculated from a fixed fee model to a dynamic model based on how
congested the Bitcoin Blockchain is. This helps to ensure that every
outgoing Bitcoin transaction from LocalBitcoins gets confirmed within
the first three blocks of the transaction being sent regardless of how many transactions are waiting to be confirmed.

After this change we noticed that the transaction fee can change within a large margin from transaction to transaction. Now to help make the transaction fee more predictable we're collecting all
Bitcoin transaction fees paid during the past hour and averaging them
out over all sent transactions during the same hour. This will help to keep the transaction
fee consistent and more predictable when you send Bitcoins to other wallets.

For example; During the past
hour you've made two outgoing transactions from LocalBitcoins. In total
LocalBitcoins users made 100 outgoing transactions for a total
transaction fee cost of 0.005 BTC during the same hour. For your two
transactions, you would pay 0.00010 BTC (0.00005 + 0.00005) as a
transaction fee.

The transaction fees for your outgoing Bitcoin
transactions will be paid from your LocalBitcoins wallet once every 6 hours,
in case your wallet is empty the fee will be taken from your next
Bitcoin purchase or incoming Bitcoin transaction.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

The fastest way to buy Ethereum (ETH) is, oddly enough, to first buy Bitcoins and then to convert it to Ethereum. Don’t lose out waiting several days for an international bank transfer, use LocalBitcoins and Shapeshift to make the transaction in less than a day.

How can LocalBitcoins be faster?

The most difficult and time consuming part of buying any cryptocurrency, including Ethereum, is converting from fiat to crypto. Traditional cryptocurrency exchanges require you to deposit money using a slow bank transfer, often an international SWIFT or a European SEPA transfer. This will take a couple of days or longer.

LocalBitcoins is faster than other exchanges because we’re a peer-to-peer exchange. Instead of buying from a centralized company, you buy Bitcoin directly from people who live in your own country. There are thousands of traders selling Bitcoin for 60+ payment methods all over the world, this means that it’s very easy for you to find a trader that is online and able to make a quick transaction.

From Bitcoin to Ethereum

The fastest payment method on LocalBitcoins is Bank transfers within a country or within a bank. This connects you to a trader who uses the same bank as you or another bank in your country, these transactions take minutes to hours instead of days.

For help with completing your trade on LocalBitcoins, you can find our how to buy guide right here. It will show you step-by-step how to buy.We recommend you use Specific Bank Transfer, National Bank transfer or Cash Deposit as the payment method to get the fastest trade.

Once you’ve bought Bitcoin, it’s a breeze to convert it to Ethereum using Shapeshift.io. You don’t need to register an account, you don’t need to remember a password and you can instantly make the exchange. To convert your Bitcoins to Ethereum, check out the video below: